2005

December

Hi, God here. I know you can hear meIt sounds mad but hearing voices is quite common, with up to half the ‘normal’ population tuned in and most getting good vibrations. The Times (UK), 24th December 2005

November

July

Why ‘imaginary voices’ are male A university research team says it has discovered why most people “hearing voices” in hallucinations say they hear male voices. Dr Michael Hunter’s research at the University of Sheffield says that male voices are less complex to produce than female. As such, when the brain spontaneously produces its own “voices”, a male voice is more likely to have been generated. “Psychiatrists believe that these auditory hallucinations are caused when the brain spontaneously activates, creating a false perception of a voice,” says Professor Hunter of the university’s psychiatry department. “The reason these voices are usually male could be explained by the fact that the female voice is so much more complex that the brain would find it much harder to create a false female voice accurately than a false male voice,” he says. Such imaginary voices are typically likely to be middle-aged and carry “derogatory” messages. BBC News (UK), 10th July 2005

Madness is not all in the mind, doctorThe boundary between sanity and madness varies according to geography. Behaviour that might get you diagnosed with schizophrenia in Britain — hearing voices, let’s say — is regarded elsewhere as, if not normal, at least understandable. In Africa traditional healers are often prized for hearing voices as it demonstrates their contact with the spirit world. Research shows that perhaps as many as one in 10 Britons hears voices but most are scared to mention it. The Times (UK), 6th July 2005